People always lean toward who's the best guitar player, who's the best singer? I don't see it that way. They're all the best, you know? They've all gotten your attention, you've admired them, you've tried to sing like them. That makes them the best, each and every one of 'em.

There's wildness, and then there's pandemonium.

You gotta come across this barrier. So many people out there can probably sing very good—all they need to do is just drop their inhibitions. That's why most people do their singing in the shower. And of course when you get drunk you don't give a shit. So you find a way to say, I don't give a shit who's listening, and sing for the gods.

I've been to rehab fourteen times, but I didn't go fifteen. I kept trying. What matters is whether it succeeded.

Muddy Waters used a cigarette-butt filter. He said, "You need to take this here cigarette—don't use a used one, now—you tear it off and you stick it in your ear, and if you put your finger in your ear, you can hear your voice in the bone in your head." This was back in the fuckin' seventies, and I've been doing it ever since.

When we started playing music, rhythm 'n' blues was it. Otis Redding was king. And Ray the high priest. That was needy music, man. I mean, stuff that would make you move part of your body! And when you hear a band and you have to move, then man, you're on the right track.

A womanizer! When I was growing up, I got no conversations with anybody from the opposite sex. Never. Then I bought this guitar. Whoa! Here they come! I'd get all kinda pussy! So what's a man gonna do? Why not two at once? Hey, why not three at once! Then you get this fuckin' epiphany. What the fuck is sacred, man? It sure as hell ain't this. So I went totally celibate for almost a year, and the next time I did it, I got married!

Pop just didn't have enough substance for me. All this nyah-nyah-nyah, you know, "Paper Tiger" and "Hold the Ladder, James" and "Crimson and Clover." That wasn't music!

But "womanizing"? I don't know about that. You know, somebody asked me one day about a hooker, and I said, "Ah, shit, I ain't never paid for it." And I thought, What am I sayin'? I been married six times, I reckon I have paid for it. Through the nose, baby!

Jimmy Smith had a song called "Flamingo." More kids have been conceived to that song … I mean, Oooh. This song will get her in the mood, baby. I played that record till it turned white.

My brother, he had more faith in us than I ever did. He would push me and push me. He would say, "No, man! We're better than all of them!" and I would say, "Fuck you, man! How can you sit here and say that? Every corner you turn, man, someone's gonna wipe your ass playing music." And he didn't seem to think that way.

You never know what it's like until you've been there. If you want the spiders to get off of ya, you gotta take a drink. That's some evil shit for people who are allergic to it.

Stage fright is not a thing about "Am I any good?" It's about "Am I gonna be good tonight?" It's a right-now thing. It helps me. If I went out there thinkin', Eh, we'll go slaughter 'em, I'm positive something would go seriously wrong.

We had a bunch of damn pills, you know, ups, biphetamines, big black ones. They seemed to come into your possession somehow. There's always somebody there, "Hey, man, you need to wake up?" So I'd been up probably longer than two days slavin' over this song, and I sat down and played it for my brother. And it was like no reaction. Then he said, "Well, I don't know how to tell you this, but what you have here is a new set of lyrics to an obscure Rolling Stones song." And that's discouraging as shit, right there. And just as I was about to say Fuck it, I wrote "Melissa."